By actually making the SMS engagement part of his on-air act, magician Criss Angel was able to directly include the audience in his "mind-reading" experiments. That was the first of a three-part SMS campaign by A&E which successfully increased ratings by 20 percent week-over-week, as well as boosted social media participation. The second part allowed viewers to vote via text message on their favorite levitation trick, with the possibility of their messages appearing on the final episode. And, the final portion was a text-to-win campaign for a magic kit.

They seem to go together - old-school physical media rentals and the almost old-school SMS marketing. It turns out, though, both still thrive as Redbox proved in this successful "10 Days of Deals" campaign. Mirroring their highly available and simple rental kiosks, Redbox offered an extremely simple and highly available SMS promotion to receive discounts by texting DEALS to 727272. By rewarding their loyal "Text Club" and reaching new customers, Redbox generated over 1.5 million texts from 400,000 unique people including more than 200,000 brand new subscribers.

Aside from yelling into friends' ears, texting was probably the most common communication technique for festival-goers at the Bonnaroo music festival. Kargo helped Rolling Stone and Garnier take advantage of this fact to create an SMS poll for the crowd to vote for their favorite band during the artists' live performances - with the winning band to be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. This extra level of natural engagement during the concert gave sponsor Garnier Fructis an excellent opportunity to personally touch every participant in post-vote messages.

In this deeply engaging iAd, Imano first played the brand's tongue-in-cheek Ice Lounge TV commercial, then took characters from the commercial and placed them in unique parallax scenes where viewers could uncover hidden video, music and other goodies, including a contest based on the ad. Not only was the content rich, the navigation featured a clever 3-D menu spinning around a Stella Artois beer bottle. Successfully promoting this holiday brand during the holidays, the ad also drove downloads to two stand-alone branded beer apps.

Taking a unique approach for a fashion/lifestyle publisher, Cosmopolitan worked with Deep Focus to create an in-app placement for seven brands - Baby Phat, Est'ee Lauder, Lanc^ome, mark., Nivea, Revlon, and Yves Saint Laurent - to showcase their products in a whimsical virtual boulevard of window fronts. This creative and charming way to present advertisers' products has a distinct Cosmo feel, allowing for rich interaction within the app, such as contests, videos, brand engagement, and even shopping as users "take a stroll along the boulevard."

Mixing well crafted video and character content from Disney's Tangled, with Apple's new iAd interactive format, AvatarLabs crafted an app-like experience into this ad for the movie. The transitions and navigation were creative and led to fun sections, allowing viewers to get to know the characters, listen to and purchase the full movie soundtrack in iTunes, play games, see additional video, and even take advantage of the iPhone's Google maps to pinpoint theaters in which the movie was playing.

The G Series Sports Illustrated iPad App targets Gatorade's top influencers by bringing familiar tabletop games to the iPad. Users can play some of Americans' favorite games, football and basketball, through finger taps and flicks. The brand naturally gains its way to the users' hearts by associating with their passion for those games, as well as carrying the brand's message of energy and better athletic performance throughout the interaction.

PHD partnered with Medialets to create this unique experience for users who are hit by Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers Season 4 mobile ad. The "tornado" runs across various apps on users' phones, taking over the screen, sucking up and crashing everything in its path, including text and UI elements in the app, with harrowing noise and intense physical shaking and shattering of the screen. The breathtaking effects brought the users right into the scene for a brief moment, and significantly increased the show's premiere rating, audience interest and favorability.

Whether thirsting for fame, or simply wanting to express your appreciation for a cup of coffee, Starbucks provides a canvas for creativity on your choice of drink. Targeting their gadget-savvy and creative audience, Starbucks guided users through this step-by-step touchscreen-enabled, full-screen expandable ad on MTV and VH1's iPad sites, where users could create their custom signature or art inside the ad and share it with fellow consumers. The simple and fun interaction generated high consumer engagement, among which half completed the entire experience.

Knowing what's in today's teens' hands and minds, Someday Fragrance chose the power duo of a mobile platform plus megastar Bieber to lead into the much-hyped launch of this new teen fragrance brand. The Someday by Justin Bieber app charms teens with exclusive Justin photos and wallpapers, custom charm bracelets which they can trade with friends and share with their star, and of course, a countdown to the fragrance launch date to raise the expectation and finally, the ability to purchase right from the app.